Lil' Indie Round-Up: Murdocks, Weep, The National Rifle

A strong sense of confusion overtakes me whenever I see the pilsener style beers that microbreweries put out. Why is Sam Adams or whichever-regional-company-you-adore bothering to make a beer that is the same thing as Bud, Miller, or Coors? The same bland, faceless, boring, unimaginative beer, even from a more lovingly crafted home, is still going to taste exactly like all the others. So I'm always confused when I hear bands like The Murdocks, who for all intents and purposes are an indie band who sound like the bland, faceless, boring, unimaginative pop punk/power pop backed by major labels that I actively avoid. (Danger! Elitist snob quip ahead!) Amazing how much happier I am now that I don't watch TV or listen to the radio.

You know all of those faceless bands who popped up in Green Day's Dookie wake, those alternative rock, power-punk-pop groups with names like Fountains Of Wayne and New Found Glory, who were doomed to achieve popularity for a few months and then dwell forever on radio stations looking back on the pop music of the 00s, forgotten by the rest of the world? Well, The Murdocks sound just like them. Distortionist is a mediocre-at-best album in this style, and that's all you need to know to decide if you want it or not.

I feel genuine sympathy for PR people. Their job is extremely imaginative and creative in its utter lack of honesty or self control. During college I took one of those basic newswriting courses and discovered I had a penchant for crapping out really good material simply because I used and abused the tropes and cliches of the form. My professor, who worked for the single big paper in my area, told me I was a natural at writing for TV news or newspapers. It made me run to the worthless sanctity of music criticism/journalism I poke at in my free time, but the class also made me understand the tough job that PR people have. They do the kind of work that the rest of us think we're above doing or don't have the sheer brass balls to do. Because something like the press release for Distortionist would be an impossible task for me. I would go so far as to say I enjoyed and respected this press release more than the album itself; I couldn't possibly make this music sound as thrilling and multi-faceted as the PR release does. Here's some choice quotes to close with; bolded emphasis is mine:

“...the results exceeded both band and audience expectations; the sugar-pop melodies and raw edginess were still there, but the songs were more fine-tuned and complex.”

“The band’s tour itinerary reflects this mentality, with shows at vomit-stained dive bars in Memphis, to house parties in Iowa City, to sold out shows with bands like Cake, Ben Kweller, and Local H(!?).”

“Distortionist is undoubtedly a step forward for the band, both their heaviest and poppiest work to date. It is this aesthetic dissonance that sets Murdocks apart from other artist: they are as simple as they are challenging, as morbid as they are innocent, as naïve as they are jaded.”

3 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

This EP has one of the better covers I've come across lately. It has the same quality as Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover where you don't notice the key element straightaway. In the case of Spirit, there's some magician dude in the middle of it all. In this case, there's a skull.

The National Rifle are one of the better unknown bands I've come across lately. I've got a huge backlog of reviews to write and this EP has been kicking around my apartment for months simply because I can't think of the proper way to explain their sound and why I like it. Vanity Press showcases a potent brew of 90s and 00s indie rock that sounds original yet owes obvious debts to other bands. Like the first Tapes 'nTapes album, really. But where The Loon tipped its hat to the Pixies, Pavement, and Modest Mouse, The National Rifle are firmly in the Spoon school. There's a bit of Britt Daniel about the singer, and the buoyant rhythms of tracks like 'She's A Waste' are right out of Spoon's playbook. Some of the piano/keyboard parts on 'Jazz History Of The World' are highly reminiscent of Girls Can Tell...but again, somehow this music is merely redolent instead of redundant.

The final track 'Too Much T.V.' is easily the best of this bunch, largely because it plays down the band's Spoon-ocity. Set to a thunking bass and drum beat, the song breaks down into some sharp guitar fired choruses with male/female twin vocals from some alternate world where Black Francis and Kim Deal sang together and were copacetic instead of growing to despise each other. But don't get too excited. This EP is pretty good, but seeing as how it's their fourth to date, it's a bit worrying that I feel that they still have some more growth to reach that proper Tapes 'n Tapes ratio of originality to redolence. After all, how many singles and EP's did Pavement, The Strokes, and Interpol need to shed the obvious scales left over from their dinosaur heritages? Assuming you follow me, suffice it to say in every case it was less than four. Here's hoping their forthcoming (still?) album delivers the goods.

4 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Hahahahahaha!

No, seriously, this is a joke, right? I'm not even going to bother taking off the shrink wrap. You can't have a band name, album title, and cover like that and expect me not to laugh.

Wait, it's the band of one of the co-creators of The Venture Bros.? Well, may as well do my duty and give it a fair listen. Maybe it's like a goth version of Tenacious D.

OK, it's a raspy voiced dude fronting a band who can't decide if they want to be The Cure or one of those more modern bands who straddle the metal/gothy line and have slick production and some keyboards. You know, like Orgy did. Wait, are they still around? But I digress. Sample lyric from 'Let Me': “If the rain would let up/moments wouldn't seem bleak.” I may've killed for that kind of sophistication in high school, but now it just makes me want to kill myself because it's so suffused with overwrought depressed melodrama. There's a song with the subtitle '(Nov. Mix)', which I assume I means “November.” It's one of those Fall/Winter months where the weather is all UGH and sad and bleak, yo.

OK, I'm still not fully convinced this isn't some kind of joke or faux-band-becomes-real-band like Dethklok. Do I need to add that the album ends with a one-two punch of covers of 'Right Here, Right Now' (Jesus Jones) and 'Shut Up And Drive' (Rihanna)? Yeah I know, it confuses the matter further still.

Assuming it is a joke, it's not a very funny one. It's just cliched enough in a gothy/80s kind of way that it feels authentic, so it's able to mock its form with its ironic content But the songs aren't that great and it's not over-the-top enough to be good-bad. Well, the combination of the cover, album title, and album cover are pretty funny. Like stumbling on an especially pathetic LiveJournal circa 2000.

Assuming it's meant seriously...Doc Hammer, keep your day job.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Re: Views on Spoon's Transference

Yes, "Re: Views" is just a pointless way of writing "review" differently, but a few days ago I had the phrase "regarding your views..." stuck in my head and liked it enough to want to use it. Anyway, I went ahead and did a video version of my review of Beach House's Teen Dream, too, though the content is practically identical to the written review. From now on I'll probably keep the video and written stuff mutually exclusive, but doing these two videos at once helped me decided on a format for all future videos of this sort, so...think of it as a bonus.

Oh yeah, the Beach House one will be up tomorrow.

Album Of The Week: Spoon- Kill The Moonlight

My current favorite writer is Charles Bukowski, a man who is perhaps best known for being an alcoholic and womanzier but should be known for how stripped down and yet still poignant his writing could be. In his own words: "a poet is a man who says a complex thing in a simple way." What's more, Bukowski's writing teaches you that simplicity doesn't mean "simple" in the pejorative sense of the word. His prose was sparse but certain lines strike home more than a thousand words of a more ornate author.

Kill The Moonlight has always struck me as the most curious album for Spoon to receive their best ratings on. It's a stripped down, minimalist album that makes use of as few instruments as possible at one time while still keeping Spoon's patented knack for catchy songwriting and rhythmic rock music. But like Bukowski's writing, it does a lot with very little. The punk rock of 'Jonathon Fisk' is a bit of red herring, since my memories of the album end up revolving around minimalist drum, voice, and keyboard based songs like the sublime 'Paper Tiger', the strutting 'All The Pretty Girls Go To The City' (with its brilliant wordless vocals that Britt Daniels spouts at regular intervals), and the rightfully popular 'The Way We Get By.' Rarely does a band manage to do so much with so little, and with such a short run time. It's as if every instrument, even the vocals, is used as much as a rhythm maker as it is a melody maker, from the Beatles-esque pianos to the chunky, rock solid guitar chording to the expressive but often staccato/punctuated singing. Sure, Spoon has always made use of these things, but when you spend most of the album in a room with what feels like just Britt Daniels's vocals, some drumming, and either a guitar or piano (but rarely both), it seems much more obvious and excellent.

To be honest, though, since Spoon's longest album is 43 minutes, I think Kill The Moonlight is unfairly criticized and/or praised for being their shortest and tightest album. In fact, I personally enjoy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga the most of all their albums. But no Spoon album is as stripped down and unfettered as Kill The Moonlight. No sound, instrument, or second is wasted. While I do think other Spoon albums boast better songs, Kill The Moonlight is the single best package Spoon issued this decade and a compelling case for how less is often better than more.

Shuffling III

Ready.

Set.

Shuffle!!

1) Something Against You by Pixies: Here we have the Pixies in all their raw glory, yelling and loud guitars and fast rock. This is one of those songs that doesn't work on its own but in the context of an album, it's genius.

2) Slavin' Away (live) by The Fiery Furnaces: I honestly can't remember what album this is from. Originally, I mean; this here is the live version from their live album Remember. Turns out it's from Rehearsing My Choir, which makes sense since I don't really like that album. Yet this version makes me want to revisit it. Or, at the very least, force myself to listen to Remember all the way through in one sitting.

3) Full Throttle by The Prodigy: During one of my many drunken nights, I got the hankering to hear both their best known work (Fat Of The Land) and their most respect, Music For The Jilted Generation. I've always loved that album title. It's got that 'big, important, era defining' ring to it, doubly so for a mid 90s electronica album. I'm not entirely sure this kind of big beat music will survive or age unscathed, but I still admire the curiously psychedelic and drug addled elements of it all. If you haven't listened to Dig Your Own Hole by the Chemical Brothers in awhile, you might be surprised at what you hear. Regardless, The Prodigy are a group who's critical respect will come some day. Anyway, this is one of those good mid-album chuggers that keeps you moving between the bigger or slower tracks.

4) You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb by Spoon: Spoon grow more and more popular and beloved with each album yet they're never become too popular or released a sell out, bad album. Even the more poppy affair like this is pretty awesome. There's just something about their classicist pop/rock as approached from an indie rock perspective that I can't get enough of. And Britt Daniel Daniel has one of those voices that shouldn't be good yet is.

5) Dead by Pixies: Damn, this is the Pixies Sandwich Edition of Shuffling, isn't it, kids?? And this is oddly similar to 'Something Against You' in that I don't think this song works particularly well on its own but it works brilliantly in the context of the album. Why, as this song ends, I can just hear the lead in to 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' in my head...

Shuffling I

OK, we all know that when I post videos, they're the quickest entries to whip up for Whiskey Pie. But the real world being what it is, my time being as finite as it is--especially now that I have two jobs--I can't post intensive material every day. So rather than post nothing, I decided to just whip up a new column I can break out whenever I want to write something but am too tired/braindead to bother with something meatier.

And so, Shuffling; a new column series where I--you may have guessed it!!--put my digital music software of choice on random shuffle and talk about the first five songs that come up as I listen to them.

Apologies in advance for the rough nature of this post, but I've been away from home from roughly 7 this morning to 9 tonight and as I'm writing this I'm getting progressively drunker. Yes, this is the kind of professionalism and intelligence you demand from Whiskey Pie...
Nevermind that bit. I went back edited the post.

1) Leave Your Effects Where They're Easily Seen by Spoon: This comes from the bonus disc of random studio scribbles, experiments, and outtakes that was released with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. As such, there isn't much to talk about. It has plodding, lo fi guitar and the singer whining out something or other that I can't make out. An auspicious start indeed.

2) Gazzelloni by Eric Dolphy: I'm far from an expert on jazz, but I've got enough of an appreciation for strange things to love Out To Lunch, which is an experimental odyssey through free jazz and 'out' playing. Beyond that kind of bare description, it's an album of unique textures. If I recall correctly, there's no piano on the album at all, which is rare for an album of this period. 'Gazzelloni' will sound like random soloing and chaotic bass/drums to the uninitiated but is like sweet textural, rhythmic, and melodic honey to people like me, who don't need easily defined song structures and chords to get by. If you don't think that flute and vibraphone can be avant garde, you've never listened to this song.

3) Da Funk/Daftendirekt by Daft Punk: As an on and off fan of Phish and the Grateful Dead, I'm always excited to see bands utilize the live setting to do more than just play a straightforward set of their songs. Daft Punk, of all people, seem to have taken this directive to heart, but rather than from the angle of jazz musicians they come to it from the DJ set angle, mixing their own songs together and mashing them up in new and interesting ways. Alive 2007 is not-so-secretly one of the best live albums that's ever emerged from the electronic music field, and even if you only know Daft Punk's name because of that "one more time" song, it's a brilliant example of why this kind of music can be so addictive and euphoric. I have to confess that I don't really know either of the songs being smashed together here, but now that the shot of whiskey and half of a can of PBR are taking effect after a full day at both of my jobs (it's a long, boring story) I feel like I can relate to the rave kids of the 90s who stayed up all night dancing while rolling on ecstasy and then went into their jobs the next morning with little to no sleep. And then did it all over again the next night. On a side note, wasn't Kanye West's using a Daft Punk sample for that one hit song kind of like a modern day echo of Afrika Bambaataa using a Kraftwerk sample?? I think so.

4) Alphonse Mambo by The Mountain Goats: Huh, harmonica, eh?? This is one of the few early-ish Mountain Goats songs that doesn't sound like it was recorded into a boombox. I'm still a little underwhelmed by the last Mountain Goats album, but John Darnielle is the kind of artist who has such a huge back catalog, and continues to release new stuff, that you're never disappointed for very long. Good but not great.

5) Let's Get Lost by Elliott Smith: I don't know if we will or can ever hear From A Basement On The Hill without always thinking about his death. We'll always have that context even if we try to put it out of our heads and judge the music on its own merits. It's a decent enough album, but it still has that unmistakable feel of something that was finished after an artist's death. Kind of like how Stephen Spielberg "finished" 'A.I.' after Stanley Kubrick died. Wait, what??....The last year or so of Smith's life was a confused mess and I'm not sure we'll really know if he killed himself or was stabbed by an intruder/assassin. Whatever the case, I think the album's title is very evocative and this song's stripped down production hearkens back to his first few albums.

Album of the Week: Spoon- Girls Can Tell

Sometimes, getting fired or quitting a job can be the best thing that ever happens to you. It makes you reconsider what you really want out of life, and what things are really important to you. Assuming you are a creative person of some type, it also helps underscore your motivation for doing what you do: regardless of your finances, would you still be doing the same thing?? Even if you never get anywhere with what you're doing, would you still create in the same way, with the same intentions, or would the starving artist life eventually begin to inform your brush strokes, sentences, and guitar riffs??

After signing with Elektra, releasing an album (1998's A Series of Sneaks), and subsequently being dropped for not selling enough copies, Spoon had every reason to be angry and wonder about those motivations I posed above. The result of all this was neither a sellout, recorded-to-appeal album nor a middle finger, bitter diatribe against record companies and mainstream music listeners. No, after exercising their bile on a single called 'The Agony of Laffitte', the band eventually signed to indie powerhouse Merge Records and released Girls Can Tell, a spot-on indie rock/pop classic.

Spoon are one of those bands that, every time they release an album, reviewers are sure to say that it's either "their best album yet" or "a return to form" assuming they didn't like the last one. The truth, though, is that Spoon don't get better with age. Rather, they stay good with age. None of their albums are anything less than above-average and are all the more impressive for the way the band has maintained a distinctive sound while allowing each album to have its own character and feel. This is a paradox that many bands fail to solve: how do you change while also staying the same??

Girls Can Tell is an album bursting with ideas, melodies, and rhythms. The album opens with 'Everything Hits At Once', a song that I heard on a performance they did on Austin City Limits and which immediately caused me to track down the album. Once the song gets to the chorus and the piano/guitar riff hits, you're immediately hooked. Returning to the song again, you begin to notice Britt Daniel's impressionistic, snapshots-of-moments-and-feelings lyrics, the way the drums are mixed fairly up front and propel the song, and the meticulous production. 'Lines In The Suit' has chunky, nearly-reggae/funk-esque rhythm guitar, giving the song an up-and-down ride feel, later giving way to a falsetto-enhanced section. '10:20 AM' is built upon hazy organ chords and stringent acoustic guitar plucking, while the cinematic ending song 'Chicago At Night' moves with a circular, unstoppable carousel ride feel while slide guitars and subtle keyboards top everything off.

The one idea I never see brought up in Spoon reviews is their incredible sense of rhythm. I don't mean rhythm as in a funk or dance music context. I mean rhythm as it applies in a rock context, to drums, rhythm guitar, bass, and keyboards. Often the main melody of a Spoon song is just as much rhythmic as it is pure chord progressions or notes. 'Anything You Want' is a great example of this, as is 'Take The Fifth', songs in which the keyboards and drums, respectively, provide the main movement of a song while allowing the other instruments--including the vocals--to weave in and out of them, providing counterpoints, reinforcing that movement, or making sub-movements and melodies of its own. It may not be complex poly-rhythms, but it certainly shows a greater care toward rhythm than most indie rock--or rock bands in general--tend to show.

Though it was with their albums following Girls Can Tell that Spoon became popular and (more) critically acclaimed, everyone should go back to Girls Can Tell, both because it's a great album and because it's a lesson to artists never to give up or to let failure affect them.

Look-A-Likes

Where I work, I get to see a healthy cross section of the population. And one thing people always do in these sorts of situations is they make up names for especially unique or awful customers. However, in my own head, I am always doing a mental check to see if each person looks like someone famous. For instance, there was a guy who used to come in who looked like the spitting image of the guy who played Ash in Alien aka Ian Holm. I've tried to figure out who I resemble, but nobody can seem to figure me out.

Flash back a few years, and my then-girlfriend and I had gotten out of a Shins show near Dayton. She remarked that James Mercer, frontman of sorts for the band, looks like Kevin Spacey. As we walked back to her car, we overheard another couple talking about the show, and when we brought up the look-a-like, they said that they were just discussing the same thing.

Kevin Spacey

James Mercer

So, over the years, I began to also mentally compare various musicians and other famous people, and here's the best ones.

David Byrne (Talking Heads/Solo)

Bill Nye (Science Guy/Bowtie Aficionado)



Tom Waits (One of my personal heroes)
Ron Perlman (Hellboy, narrator from Fallout, Beast from the Beauty and the Beast TV series, all around bad ass and most obvious choice to play Tom Waits in an inevitable future biopic)



Britt Daniel (Spoon--the band, not the utensil or The Tick battle cry)
Gary Busey (terrifying human being)